Reports continue about the problems caused by the lack of international student loans this year. Although international student loans have never been available to the general population of international students without a co-signer, a few prestigious schools had negotiated with Citibank and Sallie Mae for no-cosigner private student loan programs for their students in particular. We talked about the University of Chicago custom loan program in this blog last year.

A new article in CIO Today addresses the problems students at these schools face now that CitiAssist and Sallie Mae have terminated many of those school-sponsored custom programs. From the article:

“A number of leading business schools and graduate programs were dealt a serious blow this fall when big private lenders including CitiAssist and Sallie Mae suddenly terminated their popular “no co-signer” student loan programs. The canceled loan programs, which typically allowed applicants to obtain up to $150,000 without a co-signer to assume stewardship of the loan should the borrower default, were a financial lifeline for many international students, many of whom have no other way to finance their MBA educations. They were yet another victim of the credit crunch, which has decimated many private lenders and made those still in business more cautious than ever.”